MAURY, JEAN-SIFFREIN. — Cardinal, born at Valreas (Avignon) on 26 June 1746, died in Rome on 11 May 1817. A member of the Académie française from 1785, in 1787 he became an adviser to Lamoignon, who intended to carry out major judicial reforms. Representative of the clergy in the States General of 1789, after 14 July he attempted to leave France, but was arrested at Péronne.
He then became Mirabeau’s antagonist and the foremost defender, within the Assembly, of the rights of the Pontiff and the Church. After vigorously opposing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, he fled France in 1791 and, after stopping in Coblenz, reached Rome. Pius VI appointed him archbishop of Nicaea, then bishop of Montefiascone, and finally cardinal (1794). In 1804 he refused to be the ambassador of the King in exile and entered the service of Buonaparte, accepting from him also the office of capitular vicar of Paris; Pius VII, held prisoner by the Emperor, reproached him for this act in a brief of 5 November 1810. After the Emperor’s defeat, he was confined in Castel S. Angelo and had to resign the bishopric, but was subsequently released through the intercession of Cardinal Consalvi. He wrote an Essai sur l'éloquence de la chaire.